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eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 332
EAN: 9780345428899
ISBN: 0345428897
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: May 29, 2001
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: May 29, 2001
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Review:
If you want to understand the 1990s, you have to understand venture capitalists. These are the people who listen to business pitches by the score, the financial-world equivalent of miners turning over tons of earth in search of precious metal. They're looking for the next Amazon.com, the next Yahoo!, the next eBay. Randall E. Stross, who teaches business history at San José State University, just happened to be there when a firm called Benchmark Capital discovered eBay. eBoys tells the story of how a group of not-quite-middle-aged men came to make an investment that returned a Silicon Valley record of 100,000 percent.
Stross is a gifted storyteller who weaves the personal histories of the Benchmark partners with stories of how the firm came to back such companies as Priceline.com and Webvan. We meet guys who weren't born to privilege, men who took unconventional routes into the venture capital business. Probably the most intriguing is Dave Beirne, a hyperaggressive executive recruiter who went into the business after realizing venture capitalists are the ones who really call the shots at high-tech start-ups. We also see the problems Silicon Valley guys have when they try to dot-com the bricks-and-mortar world. The short tale of an aborted partnership between Benchmark and Toys 'R' Us illustrates why the old economy is so mystified by the new.
Anyone interested in how business works should find something of interest in eBoys. From the organizational structure and corporate culture of Benchmark to the histories and personalities of its partners to its adventures in the world of Internet start-ups, it's a digital snapshot that reveals how successful businesses look, think, and mine gold in today's economy. --Lou Schuler
In eBOYS, Randall Stross takes us behind the scenes and inside the heads of the gutsy entrepreneurs who are financing the hottest businesses on the Web. The six tall men who started Benchmark, Silicon Valley's most exciting venture capital firm, put themselves at the cutting edge of the new economy by backing billion dollar start-ups like eBay and Webvan. The risks were enormous--but the rewards have proven to be staggering. Within two years, eBay's net worth grew from $20 million to more than $21 billion, while each Benchmark founding partner saw his own personal net worth soar by hundreds of millions of dollars.For two roller-coaster years, Stross had total access not only to Benchmark's executives but to the companies they financed. He was a fly on the wall as fortunes were made in an instant, snap decisions got locked in, and new ventures took off--and sometimes crashed. Here are the testosterone-pumped conversations, round-the-clock meetings, and gutsy deals that launched the eBoys and their clients into the stratosphere of mega-wealth. Written like a novel but absolutely true, eBOYS brings to vivid life the glory days of the greatest business adventure of our time.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - a must-read for anyone in the startup world
As someone in the startup industry, hearing the VC point of view was very interesting. Add to that a refresher course on several of the important industry-shaping deals and an entertaining down-to-earth delivery style, and you got a certain winner on your hands.
Highly recommended, you will not put this down. I sure didn't.
Rating:  - Hubris meets Homoeroticism
I give this book 4 stars for its inadvertently hysterical comedy. Everything you need to know to understand how the tech bubble formed and why it burst so dramatically is here--not in the story the author tells, but in the pseudo-macho, we-are-the-masters-of-the-universe, lets-measure-each-other's-penises subtext that runs throughout.
This is cultural history at its best. Not unlike the sex-ed books of the '50s and '60s that give us fascinating glimpses of the contemporary oppression ... Read More
Rating: - A good read with some good lessons
I doubt "eBoys" was intended to read as a period piece, but it certainly does in the post-technology bubble world. There are a couple things that come across loud and clear: first, these venture capitalists were not blind to the bubble that was forming; second, if they wanted to stay alive and relevant in their field, they needed to keep financing new companies and unwillingly participate in furthering the bubble.
The story is well-told and gives you an insider's view of how at least one ... Read More
Rating: - Amazing. Eboys + The Perfect Store = future billionaire.
I stand corrected on my earlier review of "The Perfect Store" -- Eboys has now usurped the title of "quite possibly the best book I've ever read." O.k. so I tend to exaggerate after I read a really great book, but this is definitely in my top 10 books of all time... and I'm a voracious reader (500+ easy... at age 28).
Informative, educational, entertaining, instructive, and incredibly motivating and inspiring -- for all those with an insatiable entrepreneurial spirit like the one I have, ... Read More
Rating: - not profound, but not prosaic either
Broad overview of the netherworld of venture capitalists as well as short take on eBay, the unlikely "profitable" internet company that learned how to scale its technology and augment its customer base with the help of Benchmark. As other reviews will corroboarte, it's this book's ebullient writing that salvages it from a more tepid rating.
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